Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 163: Shadows Beneath White Pines
“My lady, Catelyn. She was the one who sent the dragonbone dagger. She believed Baelish, and on her way back north she ran into Tyrion Lannister. She is a mother. When faced with the man she believed tried to murder her son, she couldn’t swallow it.”
“And the place happened to be in her father’s fief, in the Riverlands. So she called men to her and had the Lannister bound.”
Eddard gave Lannor the bones of it quickly, enough for a young man with no real grasp of the Seven Kingdoms to understand what ground they were standing on.
Lannor was still a little dazed.
Half a minute ago, he had been flushed with the thrill of finding a secret that could overturn the power structure of an entire continent, a secret that might be enough to secure the Stark family’s safety and let him finish this affair.
Half a minute later, Eddard was telling him war was coming.
“Wait ... she only bound him. She hasn’t even done anything to him yet, has she? That’s enough for war?”
Where were the negotiations? The compromises? The bargains?
Did these people not even walk through the proper steps?
Were they nobles or not?
Young Mister Lannor, country lad and reluctant witness to feudal lunacy, felt his horizons forcibly widened once more.
Who set fire to the hearth because a feast was missing one pair of chopsticks?
“You don’t know the current head of House Lannister.”
Eddard dragged a hand hard across his face, his composure cracking at the edges.
“Tywin Lannister is a man who values his family’s honor above all else. He does not care about Tyrion Lannister. He cares that someone dared lay hands on House Lannister.”
“Whoever dares lift a hand, he makes certain they never lift one again. The Lannister gold mines give him the confidence to do it. He has already begun mustering troops.”
Fine. The people here were savage enough.
Lannor cursed inwardly, but his mind snapped at once to the most important matter.
The time difference.
“How fast did you receive the news?”
His expression settled as he took Eddard by the arm and started walking, questioning him as they moved.
Time gained through intelligence was a weapon.
King’s Landing’s military balance was strange. The City Watch, the Gold Cloaks, numbered around two thousand men, while the Lannister private guard assigned to the Queen numbered more than five hundred.
Over the past few days, Lannor had gained a rough impression of the Gold Cloaks. Perhaps when the force was first founded, they had possessed some discipline and fighting spirit.
Now they looked like men who opened doors for whoever paid best.
And that was while the King still lived, freshly stabbed and furious, with enough authority to keep them usable. If something happened to Robert, those men would sell their lives to the deepest purse.
According to Eddard, House Lannister had a mountain of gold.
By Lannor’s understanding, even a family war should not involve the Hand of the King directly. Above his status as head of House Stark, Eddard’s foremost position here was Hand of the King.
To attack the Hand in King’s Landing was outright rebellion.
Yet House Lannister was already mustering troops. It taught Lannor another lesson.
Not everyone played by rules or custom.
Some men liked profit best when it came from overturning the table, even when they knew the table would crush more than it gained.
So Eddard and everyone in the Hand’s Tower were in danger.
Five hundred Lannister men-at-arms were enough to slaughter everyone there except Lannor.
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